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There have been more than a few people I know that, when starting a garden, opt for the bag of onion sets one finds at most garden centers or big box stores. Later in the season the tops die down, a usual sign that your onions are ready for harvest. When the onions are dug the gardener gets the disappointment of having small onion bulbs or even no bulbs at all. What happened? The gardener did all the right things, used compost, watered well, planted the onion set per the instructions on the package, so why no onions? There may be a variety of reasons behind this, but what the gardener may have not taken into account is the difference between “short day” and “long day” onions.

OnionPhoto: Wikipedia

Onions are one of the first crops that are set out by gardeners as they are pretty cold tolerant. Onion sets and plants are the most popular way of growing onions by home gardeners as the plants are already started, thereby cutting out the work of starting the seeds, however, seeds would obviously be the way to go for those wishing to save heirloom varieties. Seeds are also available from most stores and seed catalogs and should be started in flats before setting out. Onion sets and plants arrive in the stores usually in early spring and you may be tempted to grab what catches your eye, although if you live in the northern part of the country you should be on the outlook for long day onions.

Onions form their bulbs in conjunction with the length of the day. In the summer as the days get longer, onions start to store the energy of the sun in their bulbs. Long day onions need about 14 or so hours of daylight to bulb. This happens normally in early June. Short day onions need about 10 hours of daylight. You would think that the short day onions would then do better in northern areas, but that is not the case. Once an onion starts to bulb, top growth slows. Since the day length in the north is already 10 hours a few weeks into the growing season, the plant has not grown large enough to glean enough energy from the sun needed to form a full bulb. The result is small bulbs at the time the plant goes dormant.

Short day onions, grown in the south, are planted during the cooler months when the day is shorter. As the day lengthens in the southern latitudes, the onion bulbs out. This is normally during a different time of the year than it would be happening in the north. Unfortunately, many stores in the northern part of the country stock onion sets and plants started in the south. Many times these are actually short day onions and will not do so well for the northern gardener.

There are also varieties that are day neutral. Day neutral onions form bulbs regardless of daylight hours and produce well in most of the country. A good seed catalog or garden center will label different varieties of onions with the appropriate day length label. Note that some may refer to the latitude range that the onion variety does best in.

Onions fresh from the fieldPhoto: Spurgeon Veggies

One more thing about onions and day length varieties: many people are aware of this distinction but still get confused as to which variety is grown in which parts of the country. They assume that since the southern parts of the country are generally warmer, that means that the days are longer. This may be true in a way during the winter months, nevertheless not true in the summer. The further north you are in the summer, the longer the day is. For example, on June 21st, the day length north of the Arctic Circle is 24 hours!

It’s the end of the garden season and, in taking stock of what you produced this year, you may have some standouts in taste and quality among the tomatoes included in the bounty of your garden. You may have received a really great heirloom tomato from a friend and wish you could get some of those seeds for yourself.

Or you may have a true heirloom, one tomato that has been passed down from generation to generation. There are many reasons to save seeds from year-to-year. Some other reasons that I did not mention above are that saved seeds are free and it is a lot of fun to do-it-yourself. To show you how to save seeds from every vegetable grown is nearly impossible in one article, so since tomatoes are the most popular vegetable grown, I will demonstrate saving tomato seeds.

One word of warning, saving tomato seeds can be kind of gross, but the following is the way it is done by commercial seed companies. It is also the way it is done for other kinds of produce with interiors that can be described as gloppy or gooey, such as cucumbers and cantaloupes. In fact, in nature these types of vegetables take advantage of the fact that an animal will carry its fruit away, but not eat the gooey part. Nature uses bacteria then to separate the seed from the glop.

An heirloom variety that I am saving

Another variety I am saving that started as a volunteer

To save tomato seed the first step is to pick out specimens that have qualities that you want to keep. Whether this is size or taste, choose what you want to see growing next year. Tomatoes are self fertile so what you save will more than likely breed true. That is to say, you will get the same variety when you grow the seeds again. This is not necessarily true of hybrids though. They may revert back to one of the breeding stock that they were derived from rather than their current form, but there is also a chance that you will get the same hybrid. This is called hybrid stabilization. Also, pick fully ripe fruit from healthy, disease free plants.

“Goop” in a clear jar with a little water added

The seed from the tomato will be fermented to release it from the goop in the tomato. To start this process, cut the tomato across the “equator” of the fruit. Scoop out or squeeze out the “goop” with the seed that is encased within it into a clear container, such as a jar. (Cutting across the “equator” of the fruit makes it easier to squeeze out the seed). Add a little water to the jar to help suspend the seed; it does not need to be full. Too much water will slow down the action of the bacteria that are fermenting the fruit.

Mold forming on the surface of the seed-water mixture

After a couple of days you will see mold forming on the top of the water. When you see this appear, gently stir the seed and water. If you do not stir, the mold may affect the viability of the seed. In a few days the viable seed will sink to the bottom. Skim off all of the material that floats, including any floating seeds. Dump the remaining seed into a strainer or colander that has holes that will not allow the seed to pass through.

Viable seeds have sunk to bottom

Using a garden hose (preferable) or a kitchen faucet, spray the seed to wash away the remaining glop. The seed may stink at this point and you may want to do this outside. Once the seed is clean, you will want to place the seed on a coffee filter or on a wooden surface so it can dry. If you use a paper towel or a piece of office paper the seed may stick. Plastic surfaces may cause the seed to rot before it is dry. Put the seed in a warm dry place and let them dry until they break readily, instead of just bending. Store the seed in a cool dry place in an envelope or in a dry mason jar. Some people freeze seed but you really need to know the moisture content to do this as the seed may rupture if the moisture content is too high.

Fermented seed before cleaning

Cleaning seed with a hose

Seeds after cleaning

If you save only the best seed year after year you will have a true heirloom, totally acclimated to the climate of your garden location and you will have varieties of tomatoes you can call your own. As I said, the process above can be used for cucumber and cantaloupe seeds. You will have to let the fruit of these become very yellow and ripe and save seed from fruit after the vine has died. There are many publications and websites that show how to saves seeds from all possible vegetables grown.

Saving seeds from heirloom varieties is one of the greatest ways to be local and sustainable. For those who are interested The Seed Savers exchange will be hosting a free webinar on eggplant seed saving. From the SSE website:

“Eggplant is a wonderfully diverse crop-type that can be addictive for chefs and seed savers alike. Though its spongy flesh makes seed removal a bit more complicated, saving seeds from this self-pollinating Solanum is fairly straightforward. Join us to learn how you can grow and maintain many different varieties in your own backyard.”

Anybody who gardens this time of year may ask themselves what to do with all of the bounty that has arrived. Give it away to friends and neighbors? Hold a huge feast? You may want to consider storing or preserving it for the lean months of winter and into the spring. With its current research-based recommendations for most methods of home food preservation, The National Center for Home Food Preservation is an excellent source for all types of food storage and preservation.

The Center was established with funding from the Cooperative State Research, Education and Extension Service, U.S. Department of Agriculture (CSREES-USDA) to address food safety concerns for those who practice and teach home food preservation and processing methods.

The Center’s website has publications, seasonal tips, USDA Bulletins, and a “How do I?” section that has instructions on canning, smoking, freezing, drying, and storing what you have grown all summer.

It seems like everybody out here in Western Illinois who has a garden grows sweet corn. Of course, there is much city grown sweet corn, but since gardens in the country are larger than their city counterparts and there is more room to grow corn, it is a more common crop in country gardens. Also, regular field corn (or dent corn) is so common out here that it is not given much thought. It is just part of the landscape. But besides sweet corn and field corn there are other kinds of corn. Popcorn comes to mind but what about pod corn or waxy corn? Have you heard of flour corn or shoepeg corn or amylomaize, developed for its starch content?

Most of the corn grown in the United States is dent corn, 85% of which is genetically modified. There are old heirloom varieties and varieties still grown in remote valleys of countries like Mexico and Bolivia that may hold the key in their genes that will revive the world corn crop in the event of a calamity, such as disease or pest that the current corn varieties have no defense against. These varieties are usually very hardy and can be, through saving the seeds of the best specimens, be acclimated to most growing areas. I myself have always wanted to grow an heirloom corn variety that I can grind myself for cornbread such as a flint corn. After some research I have found one heirloom variety of corn that do all of the above so this year I will try, Roy’s Calais Flint Corn.

According to the website of Slow Food USA’s Ark of Taste:

Roy’s Calais flint corn is an open-pollinated flint corn originally cultivated by the western Abenaki (Sokoki) people in Vermont, and subsequently grown and maintained by pioneer farmers, including Roy and Ruth Fair of North Calais, VT. In 1996 Tom Stearns obtained the seed from local farmers like Mike and Doug Guy, who had received the corn and seed-saving information from Roy Fair.

Roy’s Calais Flint Corn

Slow Food USA, Ark of Taste

Roy’s Calais Flint Corn is also a variety that has come to the rescue once during a past calamity. According to legend, it was one of the few varieties of corn planted in Vermont in 1816 that produced a reliable crop during what was known as the “Year without a Summer”. There were food shortages that year due to the eruption of Mount Tambora in what is today Indonesia. This eruption sent a huge cloud of ash into the atmosphere and crops worldwide were lost that year. Having come from a colder region where most corn varieties do not do well, Roy’s Calais Flint Corn has the genetics for a shorter and colder growing season. Since I am busy in the spring I am not able to get all of my crops planted in time for the length of their growing season. With its shorter growing season (90-95 days) Roy’s Calais Flint Corn is a variety that I can put off planting until later. It is also said that it makes excellent cornbread and polenta. I will try this variety this year and if it turns out to be one that I like I will save the seeds for the future.

Dahinda, IL: I have started to plant a few things like tomatoes and peppers. We suffered some wind damage to our hoop house over the winter so we were not able to utilize it much. Smiling Frog Farm will not have a CSA this year. We will use much of what we grow this year ourselves or sell some extra to Knox College; or at the farmers market in Oneida, Illinois. We are still selling eggs this year though from our free range chickens and ducks. These are available from our farm and at Vintages Tasting Room in Galesburg, Illinois. We have also been raising hogs for several years now and had a new litter earlier this year. I am also planning on growing many varieties of hot pepper; okra; and several ethnic vegetables such as Italian cucumber/melon, Italian zucchini, some Chinese melons, Chinese long bean, and komatsuna; some heirloom varieties of other vegetables like Roy’s Calais Flint Corn from High Mowing Seeds.

Dahinda, IL: I have started to write blog posts to The Local Beet. It is a Chicago Area local food blog. http://www.thelocalbeet.com/ You may start see some of what I write over there appear here.
It finally warmed up allowing time for some planting. I have some tomatoes and eggplants planted and will get more in this weekend along with peppers. I also planted some shallot starts. I grew them from seed in a previous year and it did not work out so well due to the weather and other factors. I have a flat of King Arthur bell peppers to plant. They performed tremendously the last two years despite the drought. I will not plant California Wonders again. I think that they are for a California climate or any place with a longer growing season than Illinois since they do not start producing in abundance until September. The peppers themselves are small as well.
I also got several Marglobe tomato plants. I have not grown these in years but remember that they really do well. They are listed as an heirloom tomato now as they are an open pollinated variety. Better Boy tomatoes are a hybrid version of these, I believe.
I will continue to work on getting the hoop house back in shape after the heavy wind damage during the winter. We have 3 Mallard and 2 Pekin ducklings that were given to us by a woman who wanted to give them to her grandchildren for Easter. The children’s mother said no and we have them now.
We have set up an area outside for them since the adult Khaki Campbells that we have do not get along with them. We set them out last weekend and turned our backs for a second. In that time the male Khaki went after them driving the Pekin ducklings away. It took us hours to find where they were hiding and they were obviously roughed up. Lesson learned! The adult ducks were not even in the vicinity when we let the ducklings out but a couple of minutes are all it took!
We put our current litter of piglets back in with their mother now that they are weaned and mom is dried up. They had been out on the same pasture with the llamas and goat but they could not stay. As they grow up they would have plowed the entire pasture up leaving no food for the llamas and the goat. They have an area roughly half the size now to run around in and seem happy. They seem to be growing much faster than the last littler. The last litter was raised during the winter and probably had to fight off the cold as well as put on weight. A tall order! This will probably mean that this litter will require less feed to bring to market weight (250lbs or so).

Dahinda, IL: A pack of cucumber seeds, which had an ad for a local insurance agent as part of the label, and summers spent on several cousins’ Wisconsin dairy farms sprouted an interest in growing food that has not diminished. The seeds were sent to my Dad as junk mail. He gave them to me and showed me how to plant them. I was about 10 at the time and was growing up in Franklin Park, out near O’Hare. The garden that I started that year, 1975, grew in size over the years to encompass most of our back yard. My interest in growing food was bolstered by the many gardening and back-to-the-land books that were popular back then and by TV shows like Crockett’s Victory Garden.

Photos courtesy of Amazon.com

I wasn’t alone in Franklin Park in my gardening interests. Many of the homes in town were owned by Italians, Mexicans and members of other immigrant groups who also had huge gardens and each of whom had their own tastes and varieties of vegetables they liked to grow. Grown in the dark rich soil of Franklin Park were many varieties of peppers, tomatoes, tomatillos, chard, cultivated types of dandelion, and believe it or not, figs that were certainly not available at the local Kmart garden department. As my gardening experience grew I got to know many of these gardeners and they shared both their expertise and, more importantly, seeds for these vegetables that helped expand my world view.

I later started a career, met my wife Julie, moved to Northbrook, and still gardened growing the varieties and the knowledge gleaned from all of the like-minded people that I met in Franklin Park. Later my wife and I moved to a 22-acre farm in Dahinda, Illinois near Galesburg. The current local food movement was ramping up and wanting to be involved, we started farming and selling our produce locally. Although we love living in Dahinda, I felt a connection to the Chicago Area and wanted a way to bring a part of it out here with me. What better way than to grow the old vegetable varieties that I grew way back in the day Franklin Park!

Among these old varieties that I still grow is the Italian cucumber/melon. Extremely popular among the Italian gardeners of Franklin Park the cucumber/melon is commonly known as an “Italian cucumber.” It comes in many shapes from round to long but the most popular seems to be one that is about 4 inches long. It is covered with downy fuzz that comes off when washed. It has a mild cucumber taste and can be used in salads or can be pickled. Plant the seeds as you would any other cucumber, but I wouldn’t plant them until the soil has warmed and the temperature has been above 80 for several days. The people I knew who grew this carried the seeds over from Italy and saved them from year-to-year, however, they are available from several seed companies including Seeds from Italy.

Italian Cucumber/Melon
Photo courtesy of Seeds from Italy

Another hometown gardening memory is tomatillos. There are many varieties and this is a commonly found item in many gardens these days. A variety highly touted by many Mexican friends in Franklin Park, is a type known as the “Mexican Strain.” This larger, heavy yielding variety is not as tart as others and makes a great salsa verde. It can also be used in other dishes like authentic chili con carne. The seed should be started indoors, 8 or so weeks before the last frost. The plants are grown similar to tomatoes but are more delicate than tomato plants. Again, my friend’s seeds were brought from Mexico and saved from year-to-year, but they are also available from Territorial Seed Company.

I would be remiss in my boyhood gardening memories if I did not mention two, very Chicago, varieties of pepper. These are the Melrose And the Chicago Sport pepper. Before the O’Hare area was built up it was one of the greatest vegetable growing regions in the country. Around the turn of the 20th century, many Italian immigrants were buying farms in the Near Western Suburbs of Chicago from the German families that had originally settled the land.

These new farmers began many of the truck farms that supplied South Water Market back in the day and include people like Tom Naples, who’s farm stand for many years was a fixture on North Avenue, westof Chicago. One of the peppers grown in the area was the Melrose, named after Melrose Park. It is an Italian thin-skinned type frying pepper that is great on sandwiches, in stir fries, and stuffed. I grow this variety in Dahinda from seed received from a man from Melrose Park. His grandfather bred a larger- than-normal strain and his family has saved the seed ever since. The seeds for the Melrose are available from many seed companies such as Baker Creek and the Southern Exposure Seed Exchange and the plants can be found in many Chicago area garden centers. They should be started indoors 6 to 8 weeks before the last frost and set out when the danger of frost is past.

Melrose Pepper
Photo courtesy of Southern Exposure

The Chicago Sport pepper is famous as the pepper used on Chicago style hot dogs. They are easily grown from plants started 6 to 8 weeks, indoors, before the last frost. The raw peppers are somewhat hot and great used in any dish where one would like to pump up the heat. Left to ripen, they can be dried and used that way for their heat-enhancing properties. Dried sport peppers can also be ground to make pepper flakes. These can be used on pizzas and other dishes that call for dried pepper flakes. But to use them on Chicago style hot dogs they should be pickled. Once I gave some sport peppers to a neighbor who promptly put them on a hot dog, not realizing that they are much hotter when raw. She was not pleased with the results! The seeds for the sport pepper can be found through many seed companies and the plants can be found at many Chicago area garden centers.

Although the seeds and plants for the vegetable varieties I mentioned above are available from many commercial sources, the best source of course, is to find a person who grows a variety handed down and saved from year-to-year. They will create a connection to the past, the community, and to the world.

In the Chicago area, from which I hail, eggplants grew well in the deep black topsoil of the area. Back then I only grew the black beauty types and never really did any experimenting and was satisfied with what I got. Since moving out to Western Illinois, I tried to grow eggplant for several years and have had no luck. Flea beetles and other pests, as well as soil that wasn’t accommodating to eggplant production, took a toll on my eggplants.

In the past couple of years though, I have added a hoophouse to our farm, as well as manure and other amendments to the soil. After these adjustments the eggplants are growing great! The hoophouse seems to keep most pests away and the eggplant production skyrocketed. I had a bumper crop last year. I took advantage of this change and started to grow many heirloom varietes. Among the heirloom eggplants I am growing is the Louisiana Green.

I have never tried this variety before and according to High Mowing Seeds, the Louisiana Green has similar flesh and skin as Oriental types but meatier with a full flavor. Slow cooking or braising will bring out the flavor.Tall, vigorous plants produce slender 8-9” long fruits that are glossy and lime green. Plants benefit from support producing elongated and straight fruits. Even though the appearance of the Louisana green might make you think that it is an oriental type, it was actually bred in the US. I am now starting to get some small fruits on the plants and I will let you know the results after I harvest some.